25 October 2014

Saturday afternoon

Yesterday was another bad day here at Nannyland. I was originally schedyled to receive one of the only two scheduled showers a week. The CENA I had for the morning was new to me. She asked what time I wanted my shower, I responded “ten o'clock” that morning. That allowed time to retrieve the breakfast trays after breakfast, a chance to attend to the other residents under her care, and anything else that may come up, then there would be time for my shower before lunch. I busied myself with things that needed attending to from my in bed position, my horizontal office. I looked up occassionally and noticed the clock creeping steadily up to and then past 10 o'clock. By the time the clock read a quarter to twelve, I knew ther was going to be no shower today.

A few minutes later the CENA came in to apllogize, it seems the state inspectors were in the building once again. This puts everyone on edge as the state regularly comes to catch the staff doing infractions against the rules. If the state finds an infraction, the facility gets penalized and possibly the CENAs involved get a reprimand, or worse. Meanwhile the facility constantly hires less CENAs than most of the older CENAs are used toworking with. For the number of residents on this floor the administration now schedules three when they used to schedule four. Some residents are llisted as two person assists, others only one person assist. Personally my rating has been updated from a one person assist to a two person asssist. No one has discussed this change with me, I have had no problems or issues being assisted by one person. When the CENAs get second to assist them, the other CENA usually is a bystander, doing nothing just staying out of the way.

Waiting to do anything until an extra CENA can be rounded up is just a waste of CENA time, which is already short because of scheduling less CENAs than used to be scheduled.

So, my shower was administratively changed to a bed bath, if that would be alright with me. No, I'm not pleased, but what does complaining do, I might not get any cleaning at all.

Earlier last week I found that due to bureaucratic bungling, my request for an absentee ballot for the upcoming elections, was mishandled and by the time I straightened it out the time to register to vote in this township had passed. The result is that I am not eligible to vote for the first time in my adult life. I am not pleased with this development.

The food is consistantly unappealing, tasteless, and presented poorly. I am tired of having to always battle to just maintain life somewhat similar to what I used to have. I am tired of always being diminished in nerly every action that I do. The constantly dehumanizing method that I have to stoop to in order to try to make any decisions or to do anything here in this facility is beyond my swiftly ending capacity to tolerate any more.

Before when I had to deal with unintelegence or stubbornly held ideas and behaviors, I would just leave the fools to sit in their own backwardness. Now, I can't leave. I have to remain a captive of that same stupidity as it plays out around me and effects nearly everything I do or receive. This is not a very caring thing to do to people. It is a kind of bullying, keeping at someone until they no longer speak up and give their response to the treatment they are receiving. I am tired of speaking up, pointing out how the style of help is not helpful, or appreciated. But they never stop, or learn from the things I point out to them. The onslaught just keeps coming, it is so misguided, but they don't understand or try to see another's point of view.

It is easy to see that the staf here for the most part has no idea how to deal with the likes of me. I don't act like the other residents with their dimentias, or stroke inhibeted minds. But that is the treatment that is used on me, speaking to me slowly as if I need the extra time to make sense of what is being said to me. Its insulting, I can see all to clearly what they are saying. I can also see deeper than they can that they would rather continue treating me in the fashion the administration sets, rather than stand up for the better way to treat residents because they are afraid of losing their job. People are not units or the resident in bed number so and so, they are persons and should be treated as such.

Things are not going so well here in Nannyland.